Opioid News Weekly Roundup – May 7-11, 2018

#1 Walmart announces limits to some opioid prescription fills

Walmart opened the week with a Monday announcement that it would limit filling initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain to seven days. This mandate will be effective across Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacies and will be implemented within the next sixty days. Walmart will also require that the medications do not exceed a 50 morphine milligram equivalent per day. Some states already have restrictions for issuing less than a week’s supply of these medications and Walmart and Sam’s Club will adhere to those state-by-state regulations.

“We are taking action in the fight against the nation’s opioid epidemic,” said Marybeth Hays, executive vice president of Health & Wellness and Consumables, Walmart U.S. in a statement released on May 07, 2018. “We are proud to implement these policies and initiatives as we work to create solutions that address this critical issue facing the patients and communities we serve.”

#2 First Lady Melania Trump makes opioid abuse a pillar in her Be Best platform for children

On May 7, Mrs. Trump launched BE BEST—an awareness campaign focused entirely around the well-being of children. The campaign has three pillars, which represent key areas of concern for Mrs. Trump: well-being, which includes the social and emotional health of children; social media, and understanding both the positive and negative effects it has on our children; and opioid abuse, and how to protect our most vulnerable from the effects of drug abuse while educating parents about the detrimental effects of opioids.

#3 Distributors testify before Congress on role in opioid crisis in West Virginia

Executive leaders from Cardinal Health, Inc., AmerisourceBergen Corporation, McKesson Corporation, Miami-Luken, Inc., and H.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Company testified before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee for oversight and investigations in relation to opioid crisis in West Virginia. Documents and the preliminary transcript are available here: Combating the Opioid Epidemic: Examining Concerns About Distribution and Diversion.

Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and McKesson are the three largest drug distributors in the US. Together, they account for almost 85 percent of all prescription drug shipments in the country.

The Family Discount Pharmacy in Mount Gay-Shamrock, a town in southern West Virginia with a 2010 census of 1,779 residents, received the following opioid shipments.

Cardinal Health shipped more than 6.5 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills between 2008 and 2012.

McKesson shipped 5.8 million pills from 2006 to 2014.

Other pharmacies shipped 4.3 million doses of prescription opioids for a total of about 16.6 million by 2016.

Williamson, WV, a town of 3,191 on the Kentucky border about 30 miles from Mount Gay-Shamrock, received “approximately 1,565 hydrocodone and oxydocone pills for every man, woman and child” from Miami-Luken in 2007 and 2008, according to a letter sent by the committee.

Overall, Miami-Luken shipped 20 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone to West Virginia pharmacies from 2007 to 2012.

Subcommittee chairman, Rep. Gregg Harper of Mississippi, asked the following direct question of the executives – “do you believe that the actions that you or your company took contributed to the opioid epidemic?” Dr. Joseph Mastandrea of Miami-Luken, answered yes. The other four executives answered no.

George Barrett, Executive Chairman of the Board of Cardinal Health, apologized to the people of West Virginia. “To the people of West Virginia, I want to express my personal regret for judgments that we’d make differently today with regard to two pharmacies that have been a particular focus of this subcommittee. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish we had moved faster and asked a different set of questions. I’m deeply sorry that we did not. Today I’m confident that we would reach different conclusions about opioid orders from those two pharmacies. We’ve taken responsibility with our regulators.”

The executives said their companies had made process improvements to their distribution systems to flag and report suspicious orders.